[License-discuss] Proposal: Apache Third Party License Policy

[Lawrence Rosen]

Ben Tilly quoted OSD #1 [Free Redistribution]
"The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale."

He then added this: "But not all aggregations are created equal." And now some at Apache are treating Ben Tilly's added statement as important for analysis of aggregations containing FOSS software.

How do "unequal aggregations" affect OSD #1?

I'm expressly NOT speaking of derivative works.! I used the word "aggregation" on purpose.

/Larry


-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Tilly [mailto:btilly at gmail.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, May 20, 2015 2:07 PM
To: Lawrence Rosen; License Discuss
Cc: Legal Discuss; European Legal Network
Subject: Re: [License-discuss] Proposal: Apache Third Party License Policy

The first item in the Open Source Definition seems to address this.

1. Free Redistribution

The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.

Therefore you would think that all open source software should be OK to distribute in an aggregation.

But not all aggregations are created equal.  Licenses in the GPL family distinguish between things that have simply been aggregated together, versus things that are meant to be used as part of a combined work.  Therefore if you, for instance, shipped an Apache 1.1 licensed program from one source together with a GPLed library from another source that the program won't run without, then you're in violation of the GPL.

So if you're aggregating open source programs that do different things and do not rely on each other, then open source software licenses should be fine.  But there are some potential gotchas.

On Wed, May 20, 2015 at 1:40 PM, Lawrence Rosen <lrosen at rosenlaw.com> wrote:
> Apache Legal JIRA-218 asked:
>>> My question is about whether "Eclipse Public License -v 1.0"
>>> is compatible with our Apache License 2.0.
>>> I couldn't find an answer on https://www.apache.org/legal/resolved.html.
>
> Larry Rosen suggested:
>> The obvious answer we could state in a short FAQ: "Of course. All 
>> FOSS licenses are compatible for aggregations.”
>
> Ralph Goers then responded:
>> The fundamental problem here is that it seems that most of the rest 
>> of us disagree completely with this statement. I know I do. Yes, I am 
>> not an attorney, but I don’t need to be to express that the many 
>> conversations I have had with attorneys for the companies I have 
>> worked for and that their (possibly
>> incorrect) opinions are the reason why we would prefer to be overly conservative.
>
> Thank you Ralph!
>
> That is EXACTLY the reason why we moved this conversation to legal-discuss at apache.org, which is a public email list that anyone can read and copy. I'm now also copying license-discuss at opensource.org and the European Legal Network <ftf-legal at fsfeurope.org>.  I'm hoping for responses from attorneys. I'm fully prepared to ride my horse into the sunset if other attorneys tell me I'm inventing copyright law.
>
> I will lend my horses to others to ride into the sunset if (PLEASE!) attorneys say something supportive.
>
> /Larry
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ralph Goers [mailto:ralph.goers at dslextreme.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 20, 2015 1:18 PM
> To: Legal Discuss; Lawrence Rosen
> Subject: Re: Proposal: Apache Third Party License Policy <snip>
>
>
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